Sell Like A Change Agent

Your value proposition is meaningless. It's time to change your message.

By Richard P. Farrell

Whether you call it value-based selling, feature and benefit selling, or value proposition selling, this sales methodology has severe limitations. This classic form of selling that has served companies so well in the past no longer works. Companies that have successfully relied for years on using this methodology to differentiate themselves from their competition, to translate their value, maintain their margins and prevent commoditization are now finding that it is backfiring. The irony is, what they work so hard to prevent (commoditization), they actually are creating.

You respond, “You bet. It's one of the reasons I moved over to ABC Co.”

“What about service?” he asks.

You respond again about the company-wide commitment to service and pull out the mission statement to drive your point home. “And how about reliability, expertise and value?” he asks. Since you are a professional, you pull out all the latest industry reports that rate your company #1 in its field for reliability, expertise and value.

In all your excitement to create this truly unique value proposition, what you really have created is a definitive and complete denigration of your value-add. You rehearse chapter and verse the exact value proposition your competitors tout. Because you've jumped the gun, you have left the prospect with one differentiator, but unfortunately it is the same differentiator that he will now measure all the competitors on. You guessed it: price.

Becoming a Commodity
The feature and benefit methodology that so many companies over the years have used to great success to differentiate themselves actually makes them look and sound like everyone else and completely marginalizes their value proposition. The reason is, all their competitors are selling the same way. They all sing from the same hymn book and they all reduce themselves unwittingly to a common denominator.

What they don't realize is customers work very hard to set them up to sell this way. I once presented to a company on this same subject. One of their buyers pulled me aside at the meeting and proceeded to lay out this exact strategy and how it benefited him to get all his suppliers to believe they weren't different. As soon as they believed that, they all would reduce their prices. His suppliers created a “hall of mirrors” that invalidated and compromised their sales position.

Not only have salespeople commoditized their companies' value proposition, they also have commoditized themselves. They look and sound like everyone else, and that is why it is so difficult for them to get new accounts, get high-level meetings and have customers respect their time. And why should they, since they don't bring any true value to the table?

Because we are in the information economy, customers no longer value the traditional information they used to because this information is instantaneously available to them on the Internet, and they are savvier and better-informed themselves.

To counteract this scenario, companies feverishly bring out new products, add new bells and whistles, get ISO-certified, or become Six Sigma only to find out it is eclipsed and copied within a few months, a few weeks, a few days, a few hours.

From where the buyer sits, all salespeople and products look frighteningly similar. As long as we rely on our hallowed dog-and-pony shows, we will be set up to be shot down like ducks in a row. As with certain diseases, the stronger the medicine we use to fight it, the more resistant the disease becomes. Prospects now are resistant to your value pitch.

Retool Your Message
What is the answer? Nothing less than a total retooling of your message and the way you approach the marketplace.

First of all, companies must cease and desist believing that they have a trademark or a corner on the market on quality, reliability, expertise and value. These characteristics only get you invited to the dance. Why spend time touting a value proposition that ends up being the “great equalizer” or a point of parity?

Sales are won and lost in the salesperson's understanding of the “value gap” that your customer is experiencing. Your job is to get information, not give it. The salesperson who can define the problem most effectively by asking questions that get the customer talking about the value gap will consistently outperform the salesperson with the best solutions. Therefore, you are paid and rewarded for your questions, not your answers.

Your job is to give prospects the freedom to self-discover their problems, consequences, priorities and willingness to act upon them. At the same time, you must assess the likelihood of change and balance it with your own investment cost of acquisition. Your job is to be a change agent: someone who takes a non-selling posture in helping your customer to understand the cost of change. It becomes more important for your prospect to sell himself, and at a more advanced level, to sell you on their motive to buy from you. This is where sales become fun. All the traditional pressure is off you and is transferred to the client. The burden of proof lies with the client.